Tiger, Tyger
by LarkspurLilMoon
Summary: When Sherlock finds John murdered in their flat by the Fair Tigri, he vows revenge and disaster ensues for everyone... Also- please note that if you do not like blood and graphics, there may be portions you would want to skip, or not read this fanfic at all
1. Chapter 1

Sherlock rides in the cab, staring out the window when his phone buzzes. He takes it out, and we see the caller is Lestrade. He looks a bit confused, as if wondering why Lestrade would call instead of text. His slight frown disappears and a fleeting smile takes its place, and his eyes gleam with anticipation. He flicks the phone open and puts it to his ear.

"Lestrade, what is it? Another case?" Sherlock asks with some eagerness, watching London pass by.

Lestrade is standing inside 221B, looking anxious, he says, "Not exactly... You need to get to 221B immediately." He hangs up the phone.

Fear flashes momentarily in Sherlock's eyes as he snaps his phone shut. "221B, Baker Street," he says to the cabby.

When the cab pulls up to 221B, Sherlock slips out of the taxi, looking up at the windows of the flat. Then he suddenly smoothly strides to the door, and runs up the seventeen steps. He stops at the top, in the doorway, looking frozen. He takes one more step and stumbles, just a little.

Lestrade looks over at him, concerned, and exchanges a glance with Sally.

"Mrs. Hudson called us…" Lestrade says.

Sherlock walks over to the body, lying near the window, between the table and the chair, and sinks to his knees, his emotional "veil" tearing apart.

"John…" he whispers.

He looks helpless, afraid.

John's body lies there, his clothes torn and completely red and soaked with blood, his body sliced precisely. His limbs delicately arranged, flawlessly symmetrical, his arms lying face up, perfectly balanced to one another, fingers curled in death, his legs perfectly straight in front of him, his head at an artful angle. His chest sliced deeply in two parallel arrows, pointing toward his face. His arms and legs carefully carved symmetrically with stripes of red, in a careful curving pattern, his face is also cut, with the same curving scratches, barely noticeable, lightly beaded with blood. His sides, too, contain the nonfatal wounds, in that artful curving pattern. His eyes rolled slightly upward, his expression holding a forgotten and ceased pain, yet otherwise vacant. Pools of wet blood stains the carpet, the ends of his hair wet with scarlet, and sticky with cold sweat. His hair a scraggly, chaotic mess about his head.

A single tear runs down Sherlock's cheek as he touches the bloody, cold chest wounds, his face full of anguish at the sight of his dead friend. He pulls his hand back and looks blankly at the blood dripping from his fingers. His face shows his inability to completely grasp what has happened. Then he looks at John's face. Suddenly, his expression goes harder and colder than ever before. He closes his bloodied hand into a fist, and with eyes made of ice, he stands.

"I will find you," he says with a quiet, deadly frostiness . He turns and seems to pull himself back together again. "Lestrade, what have you found?"

Lestrade silently hands Sherlock a wet, crimson piece of paper. "It's a note. We found it on the body. It's addressed to you."

Sherlock takes the dripping red paper without a word. On one side it has a symbol: **虎** and Sherlock's name. He flips the paper over and reads what it says:

_Do you like the little present I left you, Sherlock?_

_Fair Tigri _

Sherlock looks up, with a slight glare, as if thinking, deeply… and possibly darkly.

_**虎**__:__ Chinese symbol for Tiger_

_Tigri: Greek for Tiger_

He strides, pacing the small room, with that same, small, deadly glare, his eyes slightly narrowed in concentration. He stops by the body of John, and kneels down again, this time, looking for clues as he slips his magnifying glass out of his coat pocket. He stares intently at the wound marks with his magnifying glass:

_Knife. Most likely: Kukri knife, originating from Nepal_

He looks carefully at John's wrists with his small glass.

_Rub marks, less blood- hands had been tied._

He focuses on the carpet around John's body, careful not to disturb any marks made.

_Slight heel indentations- about an inch and a half wide._

He glances over at Sally's shoes, which were flats, with no heels whatsoever.

"Have any of you walked in this area?" Sherlock demands, gesturing in the areas in which he himself had not walked.

Lestrade shrugs slightly and shakes his head, "No. We didn't want to contaminate it. It is a...crime scene." The words come out as if somewhat forced.

Sherlock gives a curt nod and stands up.

"What have you got?" Lestrade asks.

Sherlock immediately starts into his soliloquy "Given from the wound marks, and the precise work, it is most likely a Kukri knife, or an Nepalese fighting knife, they have the slight inward curve.

"There are slight heel indentations in the carpet, as if from high heels, and none of us have high heels or boots, so that must be from the killer's shoes.

"The leftover traces of pain on John's face..." he stops for a moment, closes his eyes, and then opens them again and continues, "most likely implies his arms and legs were sliced, to inflict as much agony before death as possible, before the chest was cut. From the deepness of the chest wounds it can be assumed this was what actually killed him.

"Given where the slight scratches on his face stopped, right above his mouth, he was most likely gagged. The rag was obviously removed and taken with the killer when they left after..." Sherlock takes a deep breath and looks away from the body of John, "he... was dead.'

"His hands were also clearly tied, from the rub marks on his wrists. There is also less blood in that area, assuming that it was rope, the rope would have absorbed some of the blood.'

"The killer is most likely female, given the high heel markings, the writing style. And that the signature implies an either beautiful or white, possibly both, tiger. Also, the fact that she has a set code name for a signature when she kills also means that she is most likely a serial killer."

He seats himself at the small desk and opens John's laptop, his face expressionless. He begins clicking away that the keyboard. He types _Fair Tigri_ in the search box.

_Did you mean The White Tiger_?

Sherlock clicks it and skims over the results on the actual animal, until he finds one about a serial killer. _"Confirmed serial killer"… _"_Her murder style found all over the world"_…_ "Never been caught" … "Choice weapon is that of a Kukri knife" … "Carefully carves bodies to form stripes similar to that of the tiger she's named for" _… _"Always leaves a note, even if just her signature" ..._ _"Tortures victims before killing"_ and on and on.

"So… if she is a major worldwide serial killer… how come I've never heard of the _Fair Tigri _until now?" Sherlock mutters to himself.

"What is it?" Lestrade asks.

Sherlock simply flips the laptop around and hands it to him. He stands and begins pacing the room, thoughtful.

"The White Tiger?" Lestrade inquires, "I thought we were looking for the Fair Tigri."

"We were…" Sherlock says softly.

"The White Tiger hasn't killed in over a decade." Sally says. "It was on international news years back."

"I've heard of her, and then she disappeared, went dormant, inactive." Sherlock mutters.

Suddenly, his eyes go wide, and he claps his hands together with a slight gasp, "It's the same person, she's only changed her name! It's the same killing technique, knife, everything. It's the same name, only different words .Synonyms! They are one murderer."

Sherlock stops speaking and folds his hands together, the fingertips resting flat against each other. "But why would she start again now…" he murmurs.

He looks up, and says, suddenly business-like, "Lestrade, Sally, get me as much information as you can on the places and people The White Tiger has killed. Who they were, what they looked like, everything. Whatever you can get on the White Tiger cases, I want."

"Okay." Lestrade says, then, looking troubled, he says, "Um... Sherlock... maybe we should get... John, to thee, uh, morgue."

Something unrecognizable, maybe pain, enters Sherlock's face. He looks away, and composes himself. "Yes, the body should be removed." he says indifferently, without emotion.

"Well," Lestrade says after a few minutes of silence and a phone call, "They should be by in a bit, Sherlock, we'd better get going, start doing some research."

Sherlock just nods. After Lestrade and Sally leave, he lies down on the sofa, folds his hands again, pressed flat against each other and stares blankly at the ceiling.

"Tiger, Tiger." The whisper of a thought slips from Sherlock's lips, and then he closes his eyes in contemplation.


	2. Chapter 2

**_Chapter2_**

Sherlock suddenly opens his eyes to a knock on the door. He parts his hands and swings his legs off the couch. He stands, strides to the door, and opening it, Sherlock looks coldly on his visitors.

"We're here to collect the body..." the small man's voice trails off under the glare of Sherlock, however, Sherlock steps aside, and allows the two men to enter. He doesn't say a word as they lift and stick John's body into a body bag, but simply watches, his face impassive, as they haul the body bag down the stairs, and through the doorway of 221B. The taller of the two clomps back up the stairs, slightly sweaty, and panting lightly.

"Thank you for being so cooperative." the man starts, "Some people are much more... well, resisting when it comes to taking away the body of a friend or family member." he says, looking slightly sympathetically at Sherlock.

Sherlock finally speaks, "That's just what it is," he says, holding the other man's gaze, his voice cold and emotionless, "A body. There is no longer any trace of the man I once knew." Sherlock's voice breaks, just a little, on the last word. He looks away, hiding the pain behind his veil, once more.

The man ducks his head in a slight nod. "Would you like us to clean up this… mess?" the man inquires, gesturing to the blood, soaked in the carpet.

"It makes little difference to me. Do as you see fit," Sherlock states unconcernedly.

The man ducks his head again in acknowledgment, and leaves to get cleaner and sterilizer out the ambulance truck.

Sherlock observes silently as the two men clean the carpet stain.

"We shall be, uh, taking our leave now." Says the smaller man, somewhat uncomfortably.

Sherlock simply inclines his head slightly, and the two men leave 221B, leaving Sherlock to continue pondering, until Lestrade and Sally arrive with endless papers of victims of the White Tiger. Sherlock looks satisfied, but he doesn't smile; he doesn't even come close. He delves directly into the papers, looking and reading avidly.

"I don't know, Sherlock, her victims and locations seem completely random," Lestrade says, shrugging slightly, and shaking his head, lost. "That's part of the reason no one has been able to track her."

"Oh, I don't think so,"Sherlock murmurs in a low voice, his eyes sharp and intent, "All serial killers have some sort of pattern, and she is not the type to be random. She is precise. Meticulous. She'd revel in the design."

Sherlock becomes absorbed, searching, consumed, fervently flipping through all the different files, cases, and deaths.  
"Look here," Sherlock finally says, pointing to one packet of paper, among the hundreds, "The first place her trademark style ever appears is in Nepal, Okhaldhunga... Nepal is where the knife she uses originates. She must have lived, there in Nepal, possible even in the village that she killed in..."  
"How do you know she didn't just... leave from her home and start her career of killing?" Lestrade says, not as much questioning Sherlock's reasoning, more as asking how it was reasoned.  
Sherlock starts pacing, talking almost more to himself than to Lestrade and Dollovan. "Possible... but not likely. People in their right mind don't start killing for no reason. And she can't be seriously insane; she's too careful, and precise. Someone drove her mad, angry, and she is smart, very clever, and so, after killing whoever upset her, she discovered she enjoyed killing; a lot. She would then start her career in killing, after that first taste." Sherlock finished, sitting down, with his fingertips together, fingers spread apart and palms apart.  
"Ok... so if she's not random, how does she choose her victims?" Lestrade asks, looking puzzled.  
"I don't know..." Sherlock murmurs. "But I intend to find out." He suddenly stands, grabs a black pen and strides back to where the folders and folders and boxes of murder reports sit. He starts rifling through, reading the dates and marking numbers on them, starting with the kill in Nepal, he marks a number "**1**" and continues, marking all different papers, going up in numerical order, and stacking the marked papers in a neat pile on the table.  
Lestrade watches with a bemused expression, "Um... Sherlock?"  
"Hmm?"  
"Would you like us to leave now?"  
"Yes... good, fine." Sherlock says, paying little attention, and not glancing up as he continues marking the packets of papers.  
Lestrade nods, "Ok then." He murmurs quietly to Sally, "Let's leave him... He needs to be alone... especially while he solves _this_ one." Sally told him she understood him with her eyes.  
"Well, bye, Sherlock," she says, with a slight, false cheer in her voice.  
Sherlock finally looks up, and locks her eyes with his piercing gaze. "You always call me Freak. Why stop now?" Sherlock asks his rhetorical question, knowing the answer, and not expecting an honest reply, keeping his eyes steadily on Sally.  
Sally freezes, looks at the ground, looking sad and worried, showing her own emotions about John's death for the first time. "No reason," she whispers, and then whisks off down the staircase before getting choked up.  
Lestrade simply nods to Sherlock and heads down the stairs after Sally to find Mrs. Hudson. "Look," he says seriously to Mrs. Hudson, who is quietly sobbing into a handkerchief, "I know this is hard for you too, but I'm really worried about Sherlock."  
Mrs. Hudson looks at him through her own tears and nods, gasping with grief.  
"Keep an eye on him. I'm worried what he might do. He isn't... experienced with... this." Lestrade says, gesturing around helplessly, as if asking the air for an answer, unable to explain Sherlock Holmes and relationships.  
In a tremulous voice, Mrs. Hudson says, "I'll look after him, don't you worry your head," before burying her face in the handkerchief again, overcome with sobs again.  
Lestrade pats her awkwardly on the shoulder, and gives her a sympathetic look, before heading out the door himself, looking pained.  
As Sherlock watches the door close downstairs, he gets up and closes the door at the top of the stairs. His face breaks into anguish and anger. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. And when he opens his eyes, he glares with a silent, deadly coldness at the stack of papers lying on the table in front of him. "You will not escape me," he hisses with pure venom into the absolute silence of the flat. And then his face resolves back into his emotionless mask as he continues to mark all the papers with numbers.

_ Okay, I know, there's still no Mentalist besides some foreshadowing. There probably won't be much besides foreshadowing for a bit- I have to build the plot. _

_ I'll try to get the next chapter up in about two weeks, okay guys? Thanks for the continued reading and support! ^_^_


End file.
